David Ogilvy, the man referred to as the “father of Advertising,” left behind a legacy of wisdom that continues to influence the industry.
In a candid reflection of his career in an 1983 interview, Ogilvy spoke about the pitfalls of management, the essence of great advertising, and the importance of maintaining honesty and fun in the workplace.
His insights remain highly relevant today, offering a blueprint for agencies striving to balance creativity with business success.
Interview Excerpts
On Moving Up
Ogilvy was never one to sugar-coat his opinions, and his biggest regret was stepping away from the creative process to take on managerial responsibilities. “I used to write ads in this agency, and I wrote an awful lot of ads, an awful lot. And then I got into management and became chairman of the board and all that jazz. And that was the greatest mistake I ever made. I was far more valuable and useful to our clients when I was writing the advertising than I was when I was running our business. And I regret that. I deplore that. And that’s a tendency in all agencies for the best people to be promoted into management. So they’re no longer much available to our clients. They’re running our company. And I always think that the people who aren’t good at helping the clients, they should be put in to manage our business so that our clients would have the first team all the time. I don’t think the world should be divided into creative people and the others. We say creative people and account executives. I think people should be able to do both. And from time to time, I think copywriters should become, have a few years as an account executive, and then you can move account executives into copy so that they become generalists. I don’t think this idea that you have to be a copywriter with copywrite on you or art director, only them can have good ideas. It’s baloney. Of course, it’s not true at all. That’s the way it’s set up in most agencies.”
On Greatness
Ogilvy’s approach to client meetings evolved over time, and he lamented the shift from substance to mere ceremonial visits. “What happens is this. When I used to go and see clients, I always went with something in my hand. It was show and tell. I’d got some advertising or storyboard, something to show and discuss and present and sell. Now I I go and see clients, and it’s ceremonial. I just go in and we talk about the weather and change things. I’ve done my duty. I’ve called on the clients. But what a waste of time. It’s ridiculous. I get often frustrated by that. Keep going till you’re very old. And if you do that, all your competitors, the other people who are lions, will die out. And you achieve lionhood by just surviving. That’s the first thing to do. And the second thing to do is to be glutton for personal publicity like I used to be and be in the trade papers all the time, always going around to conventions and wasting your time in those silly ways. And I suppose another way is to be good at your work and write some books.”
On Fun
A believer in the idea that great work comes from a lively and engaging environment, Ogilvy cited Danish physicist Niels Bohr’s laboratory, where scientists played elaborate practical jokes on each other. “The fact is that when people are having fun, they do better work. It’s not just the sweetness on my part to make people want to have better fun. There was a great Danish physicist called Niels Bohr, who had a laboratory in Copenhagen, and they did extraordinary work. I think they were the first people to split the atom. And a Harvard professor told me that he went there in the ’30s to see what went on. He had all these great physicists from all over the world. He said that as far as he could make up, they spent their entire time playing elaborate practical jokes on each other. He’d walk into a room, someone fixed up a bucket of water over the door, and he got wet all over when he came in. It was a mad house. They did great work. And agencies, which are very correct and solid, generally do very dull, correct and solid work,” he remarked.
On Bottom Line
Ogilvy advocated the idea of doing a good job for the clients and sell their products, and also enjoy the process of doing it. “Be happy, as the old Scottish proverb says, be happy while you’re living, if you’re a long time dead. And that’s it. I think I’d put that first and doing a good job second,” he said.
On a Friend
Ogilvy categorized his clients into two groups: malediction and inspiration. “Teddy Whitehead, Commander Whitehead in the Schweppes advertising, he started as a client, and like so many others, he became a great friend. He was my best friend, really, for several years before he died. He was a marvellous guy. He was a great sailor. He was a great skier. He was a great hunting man, fox hunting man. He led a very full life. And at his memorial in London for his English friends, 150 of them, were two speakers. One was the American ambassador, Kingman Booster, and I was the other. And when came my turn, I said to these people, all English, and said, You’ve probably heard that our dear friend Teddy Whitehead appeared in the Schweppe’s advertising in America, which you’ve never seen. I’m going to show you some. I show them three or four of the commercials featuring Teddy Whitehead. I bet it’s the only time TV commercials have ever been shown at a memorial service. It was very nice.”
On Honesty
One of Ogilvy’s strongest principles was his commitment to honesty in business. He was critical of agencies that prioritized their own interests over what was best for clients. “I think there’s room for people to behave properly and honest men, men and women who will always give their clients honest advice and never advise their clients to do something simply because it’s in the interest of the agency. I don’t think it’s a gentleman-like thing to do. I think you should always tell your client what you would do if you owned his business. And if it’s against the agency’s short-term interest, I don’t care.”
On Awards
“Some years ago, advertising went through a silly season. Everybody was trying to win awards, creative awards, and it was having a very bad effect on advertising. All these copywriters and art directors, they were trying to win these creative awards and the juries who gave out the awards didn’t know what the hell they were doing, and most of the advertising that won the award didn’t sell anything. I got very worried about this, and that disease began to infect Ogilvy & Mather. And I stopped it, I think, by starting a new award for the advertising campaign which sold the most, which increased the sales of the client the most. And that worked. Then a few years passed, and one day I realized that while our advertising had become strategically correct, it was dull as dishwater. And I wrote a series of memoranda to my partners, 11 of these memoranda in one month. They went almost mad. The title of the memo was Escape from Dullsville. I thought our product had got correct, often effective, but very dull, and tried to push the pendulum back the other way. And that’s what’s happened, I think, and we are doing more interesting work today. Overall, we’re regarded as either the best or the second best agency on most criteria, and we’re regarded as the best creative agency today.”
On Intelligence
“My IQ is 96. I didn’t know this until recently, but I bought a book on IQ tests, and in the back, they’d got some tests which I administered to myself. I did the first one, looked up the answer. I was 96. I have some mistake. I can’t be 96. That’s power for ditch diggers. I thought I might get 140, 145. I knew I wasn’t a genius. I did all the tests, and it was consistently 96. For a few days, I walked around miserable, depressed. And then, no, I’ve gone through life with this appalling handicap, and all things considered, I’ve really triumphed of it to a remarkable degree. So my wife then took the test. I said, You can’t do it. You can’t know how to speak English. Well, she can speak very well, but you have to have a very good English vocabulary to do this IQ test. She took it, and she got a far higher score, means it changed our whole relationship because before she did it, we stereotyped each other, as most couples do. The idea was she was pretty and dumb. I was ugly and clever. Suddenly, I’m ugly and dumb, and she’s clever and pretty. So from then on, I found myself asking advice on all kinds of questions which I would never have mentioned to her before. I wouldn’t think she’d understand it. But I’ve had this awful problem with this low IQ.”
On Advertising
“Do you know that advertising is taught in 70 colleges and universities in the United States today? And And there are a few people who teach it well, but of course, most of the people teaching advertising don’t know too much about it themselves. When I remember some years ago, I had a new client who was having a little problem in the beginning. One day, I sent over a campaign. It was pretty good. And he called me up and he said, David, if you do campaigns as good as that, you don’t need to come over and make presentation. Just throw them over the transom. I’ll okay them. Sometimes I go to these meetings and I see all the palaver, all the preambles, all the stuff about target audiences and positioning and all that stuff. It’s all very valuable and very important. Then you come to the advertising, it’s so sad. I was never very good at that preamble stuff, but if you do good advertising, that’s what it’s all about.”